Blog Comments & Posts

I know the "technique" you're talking about and it's annoying clutter on the web.

What is happening is devaluation of google's serps and creation of tons of crap with no value as everybody got a signal to create these little crappy blogs. Now the common practice is to outsource it to Asia and ex Soviet Union countries to get it done cheaper.

One think is PENALIZING and other is DISCOUNTING. If they really want to be on the side of caution, than they should not count some of the crap people are manufacturing

This aspect is very simple for me. If G sees loads of links made from dodgy sites, or hundreds of profiles created in a very short period of time, they should in my opinion DISCOUNT them.

Even infamous Angela said this: there is no danger for you in using my links, worst case scenario is: G will not give it a value. It was a reponse to the concerns of some members of the infamous forum.

So even spam manufacturers themselves are probably pretty surprised with google's behaviour. Geezers are buying old domains with good PR, and organizing their own networks, then selling links from this networks and....... this seems to work. Unfortunately

As per the post - I noticed this right when I started (not so long ago)

For me SEO, rankings, SMM etc - is all fundamentally manipulative whether it's a white or black hat. Similar to the 'rights of ecnomy' which were made to be a 'science' but has nothing to do with the science, the 'rights of internet' are totally arbitrary and conventional thus manipulative. The question is what works at any given day. Somebody building a long term business, have to be careful, and - as you mentioned - rather use what is called 'white hat'. But at the same time, when he'll see his business going to the 'black hat' competitor buying links from god knows who, he'll have no choice but to turn into illegal practice.

If I were some affliate, or simply someone with a single and simple in terms of promotion product, like 'learn to play guitar' crap, I wouldn't think twice and go farming right away. Build an army of little smart Chineeseguys making thousands of spamm, crappy links, etc (I have on my blogs sometimes they come in bundles - cheap viagra crap etc). Because to make any money I have to be on the first page of google.

For me internet and laws of it, are alltogether a fictional world, arbitrarily ruled by a giant company, something totally manipulative and not of the real world. The rules of it can change at any given day.

I don't know if you noticed, but this way - I mean giving a boots to the crappy spammers - google is actually lessening the "turnover of the web". It's simple logic - crappy site's conversion rates are usually much lower than the 'proper' ones, build more 'natually' and 'white hat'. For example in my niche 1-2 of the top sites in the first 10 of google arenot only crappy because of the use of crappy techniques, but are outright and boldly crappy and their conversion rate is probably around 0.1% if an, whereas good sites, with nice products, good descriptions, run by legitimate people, are buried in the 2+ site of google. If it will continue, they'll have to: a/ start farming and doing all the crappy things b/go bankrupt

It's exactly the same situation as in every market in the world - the worst product is forcing out the best. If that's the case everywhere else - with just a few exeptions - than why it shouldn't on the web?

Thank you for info - it's really great:) I'm afraid I already found that my website, which is no2 for search term is fairly easy to beat:) So I myself am a low hanging fruit I'm afraid....

Anyways I have a few questions (probably basic and stupid) about the method you outlined...

I've been a bit of an ignorant on the subject matter and now am trying to catch up a little bit:)

I have seo for firefox and trying to follow the process you outlined. So my questions my be very trivial and infatile:)

1/ I think in the fist operation you outlined you go to the particular page (from the serps) you hit “i” icon on seo book tool and check “page links”?

2/ “If I see a lot of low numbers within the XX's then I immediately know that this is not a super competitive keyword.” what's XX's?

3/ I also don't know if I understand this bit properly:“I also do the same for the direct search term to figure out what related search term its ranking for and what level of backlink power is allowing it to surpass a direct attempt at ranking for the keyword (usually very strong sites that are difficult to beat).”

I too, have some problems with keyword difficulty tool that make me think that there's something wrong there.

One thing is percentages, that sometimes seem unrealistic, but I don't know if anyone noticed that competitors list is kind of strange and sometimes totally different to google serps (no matter what kind of search I execute).

I just started reviewing seomoz tools and have a little problem with keyword difficulty tool - specifically top 10 sites in google, which are clearly different than in google serps and are missing some major websites for specific keywords.

Probably I'm missing something simple.

Besides that I find tools very good source of information on competition.